Fierce

The competition at the flower show in the photo category was fierce this year. There were some fantastic pictures. I knew when I dropped off my photos that I would not do as well as I have in previous years.

And I was right:

Third Place – Digital Color

Honorable Mention– Digital B&W

Second Place– Computer Enhanced Color

Third Place– Computer Enhanced B&W

Ironically, the photo that did the best almost didn’t get entered. I don’t have a photo printer so I send my pictures to the local CVS to be printed. Their photo processor always prints too dark, so I lighten everything before I send it. No matter how much I lightened the photo of the allée, the colors came out dark and muddy. I didn’t care for them and would have left out the photo except it costs nothing to enter, so what the heck. I had nothing to lose.

Everyone loved that photo. One person has even offered to buy it.

But I still don’t like it.

BTE

I worked in the financial industry for 25 years before switching to IT. Some of the lingo still sticks. For instance, when a company posts exceptionally good earnings or earnings that aren’t as bad as anticipated they are said to be BTE or Better Than Expected. That’s a great description of how my photos did at the flower show this year.

I entered four photos instead of my usual two. The woman who was running the competition urged me to enter to the Computer Enhanced division. After playing around with my antique version of PhotoShop, I registered for both digital and computer enhanced.

I was the last to sign in my photos yesterday so I had a chance to see everyone else’s work. I almost turned around and went home. The competition was just incredible. So professional. In comparison, my photos looked like they were taken by a child. Ditto my computer enhanced entries. They looked primitive compared to the dramatic effects of the other entries.

The woman running the competition and another photographer urged me to enter my photos. Figuring that the worst that could happen was “Honorable Mention”, the equivalent of “thanks for participating, better luck next time”, I signed in my entries and headed home to watch the Olympics.

This afternoon, before heading over to the Rutgers Gardens booth for my afternoon shift, I stopped by the photo exhibit. Here’s what I found:

Honorable Mention - Digital Color

Honorable Mention - Digital B&W

Third Place - Computer Enhanced Color

First Place - Computer Enhanced B&W

BTE. Waaaaay BTE. I did a little happy dance.

All of these photos have been Photo of the Day on this blog. The original of the Third Place winner can be seen here. I liked the original of the First Place winner so much, I almost entered it in the Color Digital category but I wasn’t sure how the judges would react to seeing the same photo twice, so I went with the tithonia photo instead. You can see the original version of the sundial here.

Froggy Fun with Photoshop

I don’t bring my long lens with me when I go to Rutgers Gardens. I don’t have a camera case (yet) and even if I did, I’m already carrying a bag full of garden tools, sunscreen, seed collecting containers, tissues, water … you get the idea. It’s just easier to sling my camera around my neck.

There are frogs in the pond in the Display Gardens. Without a long lens, I haven’t been able to get a good shot of them. Last month, one of the frogs obligingly sat on the edge of the pond and allowed me to get very close to him.

I took several shots as I moved nearer and nearer. I wasn’t happy with any of them because the day was overcast and very dark and the flash kept popping up on my camera. I am still so new to digital SLR’s that I couldn’t remember how to disable that function in the heat of the moment.

After my success with the cleome, I decided to see if I could work a little Photoshop magic with the frog. First I cropped the picture to emphasize the frog. Then, after searching a few Help topics, I started playing with filters to lighten the colors.

I think that came out rather well, don’t you?

Fun With Photoshop

Back in August, I worked the nightshift for three weeks covering for vacationing employees. That’s not nearly as bad as it sounds. Nightshift at my company is 3 on, 3 off and every other Saturday. In plain English that means I had a lot of time on my hands. I wish I could say that I used it constructively, attending to my house and my gardens. But of course I didn’t. Instead, I found lots of ways to waste time. Like playing with Photoshop.

Photoshop has been installed on my computer for quite a while now but I haven’t been using it. It’s so complex that I find it intimidating. Books about it either assume way more prior knowledge than I actually have or are so densely written as to be unreadable. Everyone tells me that the best way to learn the software is by using it. I decided to start with something simple like cropping.

I like this shot of cleome in my plot at Rutgers Gardens a lot. I like that it is a different angle from my usual pictures which tend to be carefully centered straight on shots. I like that it is slightly off-center: is the picture about the flower or the insect? But I also like pictures that don’t look exactly like what they are. And this one has the potential to be one of those if cropped.

I love this! It’s nearly impossible to tell what kind of flower this is. But the pattern of the petals is fantastic.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the other half of the photo. The bug has definite possibilities. With a little judicious cropping . . .

Voila! Another one of those pictures where it is difficult to distinguish the type of flower that the bug is investigating. Even better is that I got three great photos from one shot.