World Wide Photowalk 2010

This last weekend was the 3rd annual Scott Kelby World Wide Photowalk.  If you haven't heard about it, it's organized as a way to get photographers, both professional and ammetures out together.  They chose a day, then people all around the word organize a photowalk in their area on that day.  This year, we started at City Creek Park, walked up through the neighborhood to Memory Grove.  Then we climbed the hill as the sun was setting and ended up at the capitol building.  Here are just a few shots that I was able to capture.

Giants tilt-shift

Just playing around with a tilt-shift app on my iPhone.





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I'm an Idiot!

So after a year-and-a-half of my photo blog being created, and 8-9 months of it not being updated, I just realized that I had misspelled the tittle, and the address!  I had it as "Lense" instead of Lens.  And since Seen Through The Lens has already been taken, I had to change it to Seen Through the Lenses.  If you follow it, first thanks, I'm trying to update it and post some more pictures there.  Second, please update your reader or link it to the new address of www.seenthroughthelenses.blogspot.com

Rusty's Mountain

I don't actually know the name of this mountain, but it seemed fitting.

We just got back from Cedar City. We go down every year for the summer Shakespearean Festival. We try and see as many plays we can, but it seems like with our new daughter and new jobs, we have less and less time. Anyway, we have our favorite places to eat while down there. One of the tops is Rusty's Steak house up Cedar Canyon (east of out of Cedar City towards Cedar Breaks/Bryce Canyon). When we got there, the mountain behind the restaurant was just calling to be photographed. Unfortunately, the left part of the sky was burned out due to the sun behind the clouds.

Secret Falls

A few weeks ago, a few of us from work took a long lunch break for another quick photo walk. This time it was up Big Cottonwood Canyon. Right at the "S" bend, there is a trail head. Off to one side is a small stream. a few hundred feet up the stream is this waterfall. We got there at the wrong time of day. The entire waterfall section was encased in shadows. Mixing the HDR images allowed me to get the brights and the darks into the one image.

Wheeler Farm's Barn

Everyday, I drive by Wheeler Farm on my way to and from work. Wheeler farm is a great family friendly place to visit, and it free, and yo get to learn about, yep, farming.

anyway, a lot of people know this barn from the front side where the enterence ios, but I get to see the back side all the time. I always liked the way that the back side is kind of hidden away, yet still quite prominent in the scenery.

When I shooting HDR images, most high end DSLR cameras have auto-bracketing (basically the camera takes multiple pictures for you at different exposure settings). but mine doesn't have this nice feature so I have to do it manually, which I don't mind because then I know exactly what its doing and I feel more in control. However when you do thid manually, it does take a bit longer. I didn't realize how fast the wind was blowing the clods by that day, and so I when I created the first HDR photo, my sky was in blured motion. I then burned it out and replaced it with one of the original skys for the image above. The image below is the HDR sky. Tell me which you like better.

HDR Tree

This is another of some of my first HDR photos. This is the same tree in my backyard as the previous post, but from a different angle. I loved how the sun was shinning through some of the leaves, and I wanted to try and capture that and all the detail. Only an HDR photo could help me do that. Any other photo would have lost detail in the lights and darks. I hope to shoot more scenery this way.

Due to the way that the HDR photos are processed, there is more "noise" and grain produced, which can be seen on the fence. I tried to use a noise reducing and smoothing program to fix it, but nothing is perfect.