Scott Wood Photoblog

Right after making the image of the BMW that I posted prior to this one, I rotated my camera about 45 degrees and added the telephoto element for my Lensbaby and grabbed this shot.  Like the BMW image, I captured multiple brackets with the notion of doing an HDR of the building, but also like the BMW image, I liked it better as a normally processed single exposure image.  This image is actually pretty close to being “out of camera” with the exception of a tiny bit of sharpening and a slight color de-saturation by creating a black and white layer with Silver Efex Pro and then dropping the opacity of that filter way down.

I hope you enjoy it, and as always, click on the image to see a larger version.

It is no secret that I am a car nut.  Truth be told though, I have never been all that big of a fan of the BMW.  I don’t have anything against them, just not something that I have followed, and not something that I would actually buy, but I do know that the true enthusiast calls them “bimmers” and not “beemers” as you normally hear.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy finding one posing by itself in a parking lot just as the sun is going down. (I did sneak “beemer” in as the filename over on my SmugMug gallery though just as a little joke)

I really like the effect I got with the Lensbaby when I shot this.  I actually shot this as a set of brackets for a possible HDR image, but once I imported and started editing it, I realized that this image worked much better as a “normal” non-HDR image.

This image was from the recent downtown Phoenix photowalk.  Please click on the image to see a larger version.

If there is one constant when doing a photowalk with a decent sized group, it is trying to come up with compositions that do not have your fellow photogs in it.  This is especially true early in the walk when everyone is pretty well bunched together.  On the walk Saturday night I decided to “go the other direction” and try to take as many images as I could with my fellow walkers in the frame. 

This shots in this post were made fairly early in the walk.  We came around a corner and found this wonderful mirror at the corner of an alley so that vehicles coming out of the alley might have a chance of seeing oncoming traffic.  I am actually a little surprised that more people didn’t spend some time at this mirror, as far as I know, only 3 of us really did any shooting here. 

Please click on the above images to see large versions of them.  Stay tuned here over the next week or so as I will be posting more images from the photowalk.

My buddy Mike Olbinski organized a photowalk in downtown Phoenix last night.  The turnout was great and I had a blast shooting with people I either knew before, only knew online or had met for the first time last night.

I had decided before leaving for the evening that I was only going to take my Lensbaby gear with me.  I had the Lensbaby Composer with the telephoto, wide angle and super wide angle optics.  I have to confess that shooting in low or almost no light with the Lensbaby is a real challenge, especially when you stop down with the aperture rings, it makes composing and focusing very difficult.  Even with that challenge, I am quite pleased with a lot of the images I made last night.

This image is of the light sculpture “Her Secret is Patience” in Civic Space Park.  I have shot this before, from almost the same perspective as this shot, but I really like how the selective focus of the Lensbaby brings out the center ring of the sculpture and softens everything else.  Please click on the image if you would like to see a full sized version.

I have a lot of images that I will be posting over the next week or so.