Red Cedar Log, Hike to Marymere Falls

This one is for Lily. She suggested this shot on our way back down from viewing the falls. We were amazed at the bright red color of the wet cedar log. It was raining on and off (note the wet rocks).

This was a fairly straightforward image to process. A little burning and dodging, and a touch of Glamour Glow (yes, Lisa, that is how Nik Filters spells the name of that filter...).

The 0.3 second exposure time also added a nice blur to the creek in the background.

Wreckage of a Western Red Cedar, trail to Marymere Falls, Olympic Nat'l Park

Found the remains of a giant Western Red Cedar on the trail from Lake Crescent up to Marymere falls. This is a difficult shot, and I have been struggling to make it work. The challenge is to separate the main object - the cedar trunk - from the background. I used masks to help lighten and increase the saturation of the red trunk, and inverted masks to darken and reduce saturation of the forest background. I may have overdone it, and would like comments on this one.

The red cedars were everywhere, and many of them had fallen like this one. I think they decay very slowly, but are really nice to look at.

In answer to Rika's comment, here is an image that is approximately where I started (although this image already has some processing done to it in the raw image processing function of Photoshop).

Abstract #2, Fort Worden State Park, 5 September 2010

A second abstract from inside one of the concrete bunkers beneath the gun emplacements. Probably an attempt to cover up graffiti, ironically making more graffiti. Looked to me like an abstract form of Japanese Katakana or Hiragana.

Processing: Again, not much besides working to increase contrast significantly. Applied the NIK pastel filter and that really helped.

Update: for those of you following along, note that I have now inverted the image. I like this much better. It reminds me of ice skaters under a dark blue sky with a moon. Fascinating what can happen when you flip an image. This is a long journey from a photo of painted over graffiti in a concrete bunker to this image.

Abstract #1, Fort Worden State Park, 5 September 2010

Fort Worden is located at Port Townsend, Washington. The fort was an artillery installation guarding the approaches to Puget Sound in the early 1900's. We wandered the site, and I found this nice rusty steel door, among other things.

I have been working on abstract images this year, and this is another example. Not too much processing in Photoshop, but probably the most significant processing steps were an increase in saturation to bring out the color and the application of Nik's Midnight filter.

I see a world map in this abstract. It also reminds me of fractal images. I do not think I would hang it in my living room, but it was fun to work on.

Hurricane Ridge, September 5 2010

We had just arrived in the Olympic National Park area, and were encouraged by park staff to head immediately for Hurricane Ridge while the sun was out. On arrival saw wisps of cloud moving over the ridge. This shot is from near the parking area, and the lodge is just off to the right. The local time was about 5 pm, and this shot is generally southwest, so the sun was lighting the clouds from behind.

The tricky part of this exposure was to retain enough detail in the foreground while maintaining cloud detail.  I exposed for the cloud detail (this being the most important part of the image) and hoped to retain detail in the foreground. This mostly worked. In photoshop I added contrast to the sky only, and that helped a lot. Also used glamour glow to more punch, as well as lightening the second hillside to get alternating light and dark horizontal bands to add depth.