Tall Brown Grass on Eagle Mountain

In contrast to the last posting, here is one from this "winter". It's actually a rather warm toned photo that I took on Eagle Mountain in Milton, just a few days ago. It was not a particularly good day for photography, but I was fascinated by the light shining on this brown grass. And after a few steps in Topaz, the resulting image is my interpretation of a late fall day.

I am attaching the original image for comparison as well... maybe a good idea for future postings.

Burlington Waterfront

OK. It is December, but winter is nowhere to be found this year. While going through my photos from the past year, I stumbled across this January scene taken next to the Burlington Fishing Pier. Now THIS is winter! It was a Sunday afternoon, so the photo was taken against the sun. I took three exposures back then and just now developed them with my new HDR tool, Aurora HDR (by macphun and Trey Ratcliff). I am getting a hang of it and will probably do most of my HDR work with this one from now on...

For this particular scene, I selected a rather dreamy preset and went from there.

Cascading Waterfall on New Haven River

Going through my 2014 photos, I discovered this little cascade photo that I took in May along the road from Bristol up to Lincoln along the New Haven River (and post processed the usual way with Topaz Adjust and Simplify). It was just a small tributary to the New Haven River. and I discovered it by chance while trying to take photos of the main river. It one was only a few feet tall and, of course, not marked in any map.

It shows that it is not just the big waterfalls that provide the most beautiful images. You have to explore, and more often than not, you discover little gems like this.

Late Afternoon at the Lake

While working on my annual Calendar project, I stumbled across this image that I took while on tour with Alex this spring. It was a perfect early May day, lots of sun and an amazing sunset at the Burlington Waterfront. I am sure you will see more photos from that outing, but here is a first one: The Burlington breakwater with the southern lighthouse in a dreamy late afternoon sun.

The original photo was rather uninspiring (colorless), so I took the challenge making this into a meaningful image: Topaz Adjust and Simplify to the rescue...

Summer Evening in Westford

August has been dry and rather warm this year. It's September as I am posting this, but the photo is from August, only a few days old. There is a barn down the road from us with haybales in front. I have been driving by every day, but last week I had to get there with my camera in the evening light to take photos.

Here is the result after some 'Topaz' post processing that brings out the hazy mood of that warm late summer day even better (you can click onto the image above to get a higher resolution one).

For those of you who do not know yet: I am using some photo editing plugins from Topaz Labs (Adjust, Simplify, DeNoise, ...). One of my favorite settings in "Adjust" is called 'faded glory'. I used this one on the barn photo and tweaked a few things here and there. Although I hardly noticed them at exposure time, I especially like the goldenrods in the foreground.

YAPB ... yet another photo blog ?

I know... the world has heard enough opinions, chatter and plain old babbling. But no serious photography site is complete without a "Blog". Yes, even in times of twitter, facebook, instagram and other countless social media sites, I am starting this new blog. Mostly because I do not like most of those social media sites for various reasons, and second, because I have much more control over what I post and how it is presented in a blog (no character limit, photos added to entries, formatting and layout).

So what can you expect to find here? I guess you could summarize it as "Results of Bernhards Photography Journey". Opinions about software, hardware, but mostly examples of my photo editing experiments. Keep it simple. I am looking for feedback to figure out what you/potential customers like or dislike about my photos. And you will get firsthand views of some work I will add to my permanent portfolio.

I hope you enjoy the ride!