Three women enjoying Prospect  Mt  in Lake George. I was intrigued by their colorful clothes in contrast to the other T shirted- shorts tourists. Enjoy, Jeff

I was intrigued by the opposition / composition of this viewer studying the self portrait of Pissarro   Or was Pissarro studying him?  Enjoy , Jeff

Changing the landscape

How to create beautiful sunflower images

One of the great thing about iPhotography are the Apps. This terrific cheap, at times free tools allow you to create an artistic image from a plain one. Here are two sunflowers, ordinary enough, then tranformed. First I used an App called Qbro which takes a square format image and allows you to create certain film like filters to enhance. After I moved the pic to Photoforge applying layers of water color and oil painting effect. After that I used Photoforge's curves tool to brighten the central part of the image. Lastly, moving to Camera+ I applied two frames to finish the work. The iPhone is truly allowing photographers greater creativity, in hand, allowing for image enhancement on the fly, with out being tethered to a desk or laptop computer. Enjoy! Jeff

How to Shoot Fireworks

Fireworks. Always a challenge to get and make a great image. This image is actually an Exposure Blend ( not HDR mode- tone mapping) of 3 images in Photomatix Pro. One can do this in Photoshop with Blend Modes and masks, but Photomatix makes it much easier.

First- Shooting technique. Pick a good location with buildings to frame the bursts. Turn off NR in your digital SLR, ISO 100, Bulb, f11, tripod and cable release. Your best shots will be early on when there is still color and as you can see, a rim of sunset hue remaining. Later on there is too much smoke for decent images. Exposures range between 4-8 seconds, depending on the bursts. You get a feel for it in a few minutes. One can also use a black card between bursts to get multiple bursts on the frame without blowing out the shot.

Second-Processing. Pick about 3 images and align them in PS or let Photomatix do it for you. After that, a little curves adjustment, saturate the firework trails color a little and apply noise reduction if needed. I used Noise Ninja, which did a great job. Another noise reduction technique is to take a Black Frame first ( pic with lens cap on) for 5 seconds and use this to subtract noise in PS with Difference Blend.

Enjoy, Jeff

The Belly Dancer

• The Belly Dancer. I liked the subject so much, I reworked some of the images in Topaz Adjust to deepen color and contrast. By putting 3 images up, a greater sense of movement is created. I am going to get this printed, matted in a tri-mat and then framed. Enjoy, Jeff

How to Use Slow Sync Flash

Our good friends David and Elaine took us to a wonderful Middle Eastern restaurant near Newton Mass. The food, company and the Belly dancer, Kaleen were all superb!

I posted this image to show you an example of Slow-Sync Flash, a technique that allows one to capture and convey motion and still define what is the subject. To do this I used the Lumix LX5 on ISO 200, F4 and 1/8sec with forced fill flash. The flash part of the exposure captures enough detail in the face and the ambient light exposure captures the motion. To see more in a short slide show to music, go to my Smugmug site at:

http://morninglight.smugmug.com/Photography/Videos/17864478_brVG5w#1366338883_vzBz8c7

Emotion after the Freihofer

My good friend Sandy got me a Press Pass to shoot the annual Freihofer Run for Women, June 5th. After the race, the Albany County Fire Dept sets up a hose with a wide spray for the runners to cool off. This is my favorite time of shooting during this event. To capture the emotion and stop the water droplets I shot with Tv Priority at 1/500th second, ISO 200, F11 to capture this scene. I love the emotion and joy that this runner shows. Enjoy, Jeff