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I took the shot above a few days ago when exploring Victoria, BC. I didn't shoot anything today.
I processed this image during "happy hour" at the Image Explorations conference and have to give William P. credit for giving me a blind hint when I said "what does this need" and he said "invert it", without even seeing the image. I did invert a duplicate of the image and then set that layer to color mode and that made the sky orange.
Today was the first full day of my class at the Image Explorations conference. I think the class is getting along great and we seem to be having a good time.
I haven't been shooting much since class started because we've been slaving away in front of our computer screens for about eight hours a day. The image above is one that I shot yesterday while exploring Victoria. It's the first image I've posted that I've shot with my new 15mm fisheye lens. As usual, you can click on the image to see a larger version.
Today I explored a small part of Victoria, BC and took the shot above. I then took an hour bus ride away from the city to the location where I'll be presenting a workshop. I'm not sure if I'll do much shooting during this workshop, but I'll try to talk myself into posting something during the week.
I'm flying out to Victoria, BC today. I'll be presenting a Photoshop for Wedding and Portrait Photographers seminar at the Image Explorations Conference. After that, I'll have three days off to explore the Vancouver area.
I've been in Fort Worth, TX all day today. I'm getting ready to fly out to present a few seminars.
I shot the image above in downtown Fort Worth after having dinner and interesting conversation at bar/restaurant called the Flying Saucer.
I spent most of the day driving and logged over 450 miles driving from Tucumcari, TX to Fort Worth, TX. I followed Route 66 until I got to Amarillo and made a quick stop at the Cadillac Ranch before putting the hammer down and driving the rest of the way to Fort Worth.
I shot the image above today. I was amused by the brown sludge that was at the bottom of the pool and thought it generally reflected the state of many of the buildings that are found along Route 66.
Today, I drove from Albuquerque to Tucumcari, New Mexico. Tucumcari is the place that got me interested in following Route 66 in the first place. I had driven through this town on a whim when driving across the country many months ago and ended up with some great shots (like the interior of a gas station that many people say looks like a drawing).
The images above were shot today in Cuervo, New Mexico where there are about a dozen abandoned buildings that make up a virtual ghost town. It felt weird shooting while I could see and hear the traffic on the interstate go by... people were so close, yet might as well been a million miles away. Both of these images have been heavily processed to see how far I could push them to produce an interesting result.
This morning, Matt from EarthRoamer paid me a visit and showed off a brand new 4x4 EarthRoamer XV-LT. He was passing through Albuquerque on his way to deliver the unit to someone in Phoenix, AZ. I was very impressed with how well engineered the unit was and how much they were able to shove into such a small vehicle (it's 25' 1" long).
The shot above is of an old diner that is now being used as a police station in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The interior looks just like a diner with the exception of the greenish bullet-proof glass.
This is a somewhat odd treatment in that the colors and brightness in the neon sign are reversed from normal. That was an accident that I ended up liking. I blended three exposures together, but the neon sign was too bright. I then opened the darkest exposure (which was mainly black with the exception of the sign), laid it on top of the blended exposures and set the blending mode for the layer to Difference mode to make sure it lined up with the underlying layers. To my surprise, the colors & brightness reversed in the sign, but the rest of the image was unchanged. The sign was the only area affected because black is ignored in Difference mode and most of the neon layer was black.
The shot above was taken in a tiny town called San Fidel. That tiny gray line you can just make out through the window is Route 66.
Bill H. made a comment the other day asking to see what my original exposures look like for one of my images... continue reading to see the three shots I used to create the image above. They are shown un-cropped and were processed with Camera Raw's default settings, so you can see the raw material I worked with.
Today, I followed Route 66 from Winslow, Arizona to Milan, New Mexico. On the way, I shot at least 20GB of images and am rather tired after pushing that shutter button so much in a single day.
The shot above was taken at a double-secret location (sheeeesh... exit 320 off I40 in Arizona, go North one mile, turn left and head 2.5 miles... plan for bumps, gravel and otherwise off the beaten track stuff). It's the old Painted Desert Trading Post that used to be passed by thousands on Route 66, but is now in the middle of the desert on a part of Route 66 that few people see these days. I doubt it will be standing for too many additional years since its roof and floor are starting to crumble.
