I’ve been attending the meetings of the <a href= “http://www.jeffcityphotoclub.com/”>Jeff City Photo Club</a> since about February, and last month’s meeting was an evening shoot.  As a follow-up at last night’s meeting, we showed off our images we took.  I was pretty excited for this opportunity.  I’ve had pictures in the monthly contests and presented some post-processed images that fit the subject of the monthly contest, but nothing that really represented what I do.  I was pleased with the reaction to some of these images below, especially the HDR-like images.

The other members of the club seem to be mostly of the ‘post-processing is cheating’ school of thought, which I do not understand at all.  Ansel Adams, for one, was known for the efforts he put in post-processing his images in the darkroom, and I am certain that he would take advantage of the abilities of digital imaging and PhotoShop if he was alive today.

I want to make the images look the way they looked in my head when I saw the scene and set up my tripod.  If that requires PhotoShop, so be it, but that can’t make up for lousy technical abilities.  You still have to learn to use the camera.  You also have to learn PhotoShop, and it involves a giant learning curve.  I know I have used it on and off since the late 90s, but I still haven’t mastered even one tenth of the program’s capabilities.  But in today’s field of photography, you have to understand that post-processing goes hand-in-hand with digital imaging, just as it did in the darkroom.  Make use of the tools that are available to you!

Here are some of the images I displayed last night.

These were all taken around the Missouri State Capitol building in Jefferson City, Missouri.  The light trails picture was a four-second exposure while I was swinging the camera around near a light on the pathway.  I have more of those on my Flickr page, but they were just for fun.

The two pictures with the Capitol dome and the fountain are high dynamic range images, or HDR.  It involves taking multiple exposures of the same scene (exactly!  I use a tripod and a remote so that I don’t wobble the camera at all) and then layering them together using either one of the software packages available or doing it manually in PhotoShop.  I do it manually because I haven’t been pleased with the outcome of the software packages.

Anyway!  It has been a very long few weeks for me, and I have a ton of work waiting for me at home.  I had two shoots over the weekend and my first wedding is coming up this weekend, but after that I have a lull for several weeks and I’m very happy about that.  I hope to get this work done so that I can use my time on nature images as the summer winds down and autumn approaches.

The Visions photography contest is held annually in conjunction with the Columbia Festival of the Arts in late September.  I have not decided if I am participating in it this year.  I also may have a lead on another place to hang work if I pick out some images and get them framed.  We’ll see!

Time got away from me this month, and I realized over the weekend that I needed to finalize the pictures for the rotating exhibit, like, weeks ago, and get myself to the frame shop, like, now.  So I’ve been working on these for the past couple of nights and sent the rest of them to the printer today with the hope that I can get them framed this weekend.

I still don’t know any details about where my photos will be hung, but I have been assured that they will go up in July somewhere in town.

I decided to go with a theme for these pictures, rather than just collecting some random images together, and my first theme would be these images of slow water and rocks that I took in Yosemite National Park in April.  It was the most wonderful trip, but I’ve been so busy since I got home that I have barely had time to process anything.  This was my first real chance to sort through, image by image, and post-process.  But it was only about 200 or so of the 5200 photos that I took on that trip.  (!)

I intended to do six to ten of them, all in black & white or warm black & white, but as I was wading around knee-deep in the pictures, I realized that there was too much color to let it go.  I still have three monochrome images that are part of the exhibit, but the rest are subtly colorful rocks & water.

No, the colors are too good to drop.

These were all taken on the same trail, Mirror Lake, which is lovely in the spring.  I was there in the early morning before the sun was too high, and I probably spent two hours just taking pictures of the water and rocks of Tenaya Creek, which is at the base of Half Dome.  So gorgeous!

The only problem was the sign at the beginning of the trail that warned of mountain lions.  As I was snapping away, I kept looking over my shoulder, certain I was being stalked.

I have more images from the upcoming mini-exhibit in a set on my Flickr page.