Grey & Icy Garden of the Gods

[ashfordphoto]

Well, today was really a terrible day to shoot - just about as grey as they come. I just got eager, I haven't shot anything in a few days so I went out anyway.

I'm new to this whole ice thing - - lived in Houston my whole life until moving here last summer. So, I added the picture of the ice on the limb just because I think it's super rad the way the ice is pointy! I know it's not the greatest picture, but the ice is cool!


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[Myspacepix!]

yeah it was grey and icy today. i was gunna go take some pics of my grass actully but anyways. all you folks who wanna mover out west wit me and ashfordphoto than like.. wait untill andother week. its freezing! like the pics

 

[ashfordphoto]

thanks myspace. are you in the springs? gonna come to the meetup next weekend?

 

[LaFoto]

Whoa!
I do love your second photo here!
Just a tiny bit of play with it in PS, minute changes to the levels, and a bit of USM and you have a real and total stunner (so I say).

That pointy ice looks cool. It sure does.
And hey, we have had grey days like that from November through March almost uninterruptedly. I was about to go mad ...

 

[Tantalus]

The dusting of white snow looks nice on those red rocks.

 

[ashfordphoto]

thanks for the comments. LaFoto - you mind playing with #2 and giving me some ideas of where to take it? I'm having a hard time playing with it without blowing out that snow.

 

[LaFoto]

Well, I tried. Just tried.
Levels: highlights from 255 to 225. Shadows from 0 to 10.
USM at 70-50-50.

Well, and then ... forgive me ... I got carried away a little and thought I would like to try something on this picture that'd create (maybe, hopefully) a bit of a 3-D-effect by lassoing the part behind the foreground part (at 5px, since the pic to work with is so small) and applying a bit of Gaussian blur on the background... it did not work out so well, but since I played, I want to give you the chance to see how I played:

Well?

 

[ashfordphoto]

dang! what a super idea with the blur! I'm going to have to play with that. I was sad I couldn't get more depth in the picture than I did.

thanks for working on it. gives me some ideas I haven't thought about before

 

[KillerChaos]

As I've told you before in one of your GoTGs threads. It's beautiful there and i'm jealous. I hope to go there sometime soon, but probably won't happen anytime soon. Anyways, as always. Nice Shots! :thumbup:

 

[ashfordphoto]

thanks, killer. my wife and I just bought our first house and it's about 5 mins from the garden, so I'm sure you'll see more pictures to try and hold you over until you make it yourself

 

[NJMAN]

Your focused foreground idea really worked well!