Belleville Waterfront HDR

Belleville Waterfront HDR
Originally uploaded by Robert Scott Photography

Second photograph taken on the Belleville waterfront with HDR processing done and a major color overhaul!

Belleville Waterfront HDR

Belleville Waterfront HDR
Originally uploaded by Robert Scott Photography

I am extremely proud of this and the next photo that I'll be posting. This particular HDR Image was taken on the Belleville waterfront trail on the afternoon of Feb 15th.

This one has steadily risen in the Flickr ranks, and recently plateaued at #79 in Flickr Explore for Feb 15, 2008. For my readers who aren't familiar with Flickr and the Explore system, here's a quick rundown!

Each day, there are an average of 1,500,000 photographs uploaded to the Flickr website by a multitude of users. Users view and comment on other user's photographs, tags are added to most photos and a lot are added to various groups. Flickr calculates constantly what it considers the most Interesting photos uploaded on any given day.

I'm proud to say that, at one point, this photograph was the 79th most popular photo uploaded to Flickr on Feb 15th, 2008!! (although my best is still 8th in Explore for a ring and bible shot)

St. Andrews Church

St. Andrews Church
Originally uploaded by Robert Scott Photography

St. Andrews Church in Belleville, Ontario is a beautiful location where I photographed a wedding near the end of 2007. At the time, I didn't have any knowledge of HDRI (High Dynamic Range Imagery). I'd seen some absolutely stunning photographs on Flickr tagged with HDR and in HDR groups, but hadn't taken the time to read up on the process or try it out for myself.

Recently, I took up the task of learning the whole HDR process and now there's no looking back! I find myself now taking drives, just looking for interesting locations to turn into these amazing HDR images!

For this one, I returned to St. Andrew's Church on Feb 15th for the sole purpose of creating HDR Images. This was pretty early in the morning, and I'd like to pass on again my sincere thanks to the Church's care-taker who allowed my entry and gave me unlimited time to fiddle with the camera and tripod.

So far, this is the only Church I've had a chance to shoot and convert to HDR, but after seeing the result, I know there will be many more in the future!

Old Photo Effect

Old Photo Effect
Originally uploaded by Robert Scott Photography

For those of you who know me well, you've probably heard me speak of our family's cottage on the Canadian side of the 1000 Islands (St. Lawrence River).

As far back as I can remember, my family would spend the whole summer break each year on the island. I have so many memories rooted in my time on the Island, they are the best memories of my child-hood. For the last four or five years, I've only been able to get out to the Island for a couple days during the summer and am hoping to have the opportunity to spend a lot more time there in the coming years.

This photograph of the Island was taken in 2005. I brought this into Photoshop, applied a texture to the main photograph, converted to black & white and used the outline of an old piece of paper to create the edges.

The comments on Flickr have been great so far! One person states that it looks like an old photo that one might find in a thrift shop! That's exactly what I was going for!

Texture Tutorial 1

Texture Tutorial 1
Originally uploaded by Robert Scott Photography

After my whole week worth of playing with textures, I received many questions from people on Flickr about the process that I'm using to create these photographs.

It's actually fairly simple! I've created a step-by-step tutorial for Photoshop users to follow along with! I'm sure there's many more things that you can do with textures and photographs, and I'm just barely scratching the surface here!

Clicking on the image will take you to it's Flickr page. The 11 step process is explained in writing and aided by visual screen-shots to help the visual learners!

Texture Experiments 2

Texture Experiments
Originally uploaded by Robert Scott Photography

Continuing on the texture theme of the last post, this is another one that I've done using a few different Photoshop methods. I still can't decide, however, whether I like the final product. Seems there's something missing and I just can't pinpoint what it is! Any suggestions from my blog readers?

Texture Experiments

Texture Experiments
Originally uploaded by Robert Scott Photography

I'm learning more and more about Photoshop and applying different effects to photographs every day. This particular photo, taken in late October of 2007, was pretty boring before adding the texture. Now I believe it has a lot more character.

The trees leaning in from the sides of the road, the colors, and the over all feel are more like a painting than a photograph. Exactly the effect I was after!