Nostalgia  -  2009 Presidential Inauguration.  

Along with more than a million fans, I braved the sub-freezing temperatures to witness the historic inauguration of Barack Obama. An incredible day, filled with excitement, enthusiasm, and great memories. Enjoy! Nancy

Ship

Taken from balcony in Ft. Lauderdale after a storm.

Kenilworth Gardens

Here are some of the many pictures I took at Kenilworth Gardens this July.

Saturated.

Less saturated.

Applying Luminosity Masks to Photoshop Adjustments Layers

At our October meeting I talked about luminosity masking and Barbara worked on an image by Bill Alsmeyer-Johnson to illustrate post-processing with Lightroom.  At the end of class I suggested combining the two and seeing what using luminosity masking might do with Bill's image.  Below are the starting and finishing images.  To get there I used three adjustments in photoshop with luminosity masks to make them stronger in lighter or darker areas respectively.  First I cropped the image and then reduced the red in the foliage with a mask that applied most of the change to lighter areas.  I then deepened shadows and contrast with another mask that applied proportionately more of the change to darker areas.  I then used another adjustement to increase local contrast, again with more change going to the lighter areas.  Finally I used a straight adjustment mask to darken the overly light edges and top of the image.

My sense is that luminosity masking in Photoshop does a lot of what the clarity adjustment does in Lightroom, but since the luminosity mask a general mask,  it can be applied to all kinds of adjustments and not simply local contrast.  I am sure that there are many ways to get this same effect, but this is a useful tool.

At our last session, Barbara was puzzled about a photo workshop in Wildwood, New Jersey, that Susan and I took just before the summer season began there in 2014, presented by Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. It seemed like she didn't see what you would photograph there.   Over the course of the five day workshop I took nearly 400 images of the boardwalk, the beach, and the town, both day and night.  It was mostly architectural, lighting and landscape, with lots of pictures of people enjoying themselves.  On the last day of the workshop we had to present what we felt were the 10 best pictures we took.  I am not sure that nearly three years later, they would still be my choices, but here they are.

Luminosity Masking in Photoshop

Here's a link to a series of blogs by Tony Kuyper, that I was pointed to last year while on a workshop in Santa Fe.

https://tonykuyper.wordpress.com/2016/11/13/luminosity-masks-10th-anniversary%E2%88%92a-brief-history-of-how-it-all-started/

About ten years ago he invented a Photoshop masking process that generated continuous masks based on the luminosity of areas of an image.  It looked intriguing, but I confess that I never followed up, as I'm pretty content with the Photoshop adjustment layer controls that I use at present.  Also, his methodology has a definite learning curve. However, I joined distribution list, have been following his progress, and think that I will try it out and see if it makes much difference to the images that I print.

Images from Blackwater

Hi,

At the last gathering, we discussed photographing Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, and I said that I would post some of the images that I had taken over the past four or five years.  Here are ten images, edited down from nearly 650.  As you can see, with a relatively flat horizon the sky becomes a major point of interest, and clouds, sunsets, and reflections all contribute to the images that I liked best.  I've included more images of birds than I expected to, as my wife is the birder, and I am more interested in graphic composition.  Susan and I are in agreement that hanging around until dark frequently yields some great sunset color, even when it doesn't look like it is going to.  We've seen thousands of Snow Geese in the winter, and Canada Geese, Blue Herons and Egrets are a staple.  And we have never failed to see one or more Bald Eagles, sometimes more than a dozen on a visit.

Although you can overnight easily in the area, I think of it as a day trip, stopping at Annie's on Kent Island Narrows for dinner on our way back.  It's about two hours each way.

Harry Meyers