This monday we had the most spectacular sunset I've seen in a long while.  Michael and I have a very nice view from our backyard and while we were working in the garden and the sun was slowly sinking I could just tell it was going to be a good one.  I ran inside and grabbed my D200 and snapped away.  I will say that I overexposed some shots (for foreground detail) and then did a slight underexposed shot for glorious sky color.  I then place one on top of the other in photoshop and used a mask to bring the best attributes of the picture on bottom.

June Sunset

And since it's a short week and everyone's been taking off here at work, I was slightly bored yesterday and have CS4 on my computer at work, so I played with the only effect I know how to use:  Orton Effect.

Thanks for looking, comments are always appreciated.  Oh and HAPPY 4th EVERYONE!

edit:  for those who want to know how to do the orton effect, here are the instructions

Friday while I was testing the new equipment, I went walking around for an hour.  There really wasn't anything to take pictures of, I snapped a few things that I thought might be interesting, but even with this amazing camera they didn't have any oomph behind them so I disregarded them.  I kinda liked these two shots of the light filtered through the leaves, but I wasn't sure they were any good.  So I threw them back into photoshop and turned them to black & white.  Maybe... but then I thought about the one and only photoshop technique I've ever done other than levels, curves and a mask or two and went digging for the instructions.  This, I like:

Ortonized Trees

Thanks for looking.  Comments and critiques always welcome!

For Pat's "Tree Challenge" ... These are some pictures of trees from my last two trips to Zion National Park in Southern Utah ...

 Zion Aspens - Orton Effect 

 Zion Fence Posts 

 Zion Golden Tree 

 Fall In Zion 

 Winter in Zion 

Thank you for looking and for your comments ...

Several days ago in the Photography Discussion Forum I posted a link to an article on …

... “How to Write a Critique of a Photograph" ...

One of the greatest things from this article is the fact that you don't have to be an expert in photography to write your critique … you just right how you feel about the image!!

A number of the people who looked at this article felt that it should be made available to everyone … so here goes …

This is the link:  

http://www.myshutterspace.com/group/constructivecriticism/forum/topic/show?id=1177697%3ATopic%3A156345

There is a PDF file at the end of the article that is easier to read and can be downloaded to your computer.

I hope you find this article as helpful as I did …

I have also included some images that I have converted with the use of the Orton Effect to give you something to practice on … Zion National Park ... Zion National Park  ... Bridge in Zion National Park 

A lot of us seem to be having Camera Club Contests ... Well once again I'm no exception ... My Camera Club's Theme this month is "Opposites" ... (All entrys will be electronically projected) ... This is going to be my entry ...  

Stop & Go ... Walk & Don't Walk ... Opposites For Sure!! ... Well after many hours I was never able to load my image into this story ... But it is the same as the thumb and is also in my dashboard ... Sorry to make this so much trouble ...

I will also be entering two additional images .. Creative Category  ... Electric Owl in Flight    (One of my smoke images ...) ... and Unclassified Category ... Mojave Shed Orton     (I choose this category because there was so much manipulation done to this image it didn't match anything else ...)  Both of these images I have posted before ... This time with some changes ...

Any criticism or comments that you care to make would be very much appreciated …  I still have a week to make any changes to the images  …  Thank you for looking … and commenting!!