Weekly Photo Challenge: Sky
©Rena Katinas
So, I’m a little behind on my Photo Challenges. With the subject being sky, I shouldn’t be, as I’m a big fan of cloud watching and star gazing. Anyhoo, I shot this the day after the Great Storm of June 2011, from my back porch.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Refreshing
©Rena Katinas
You’re thinking, lightning is not refreshing. On a hot Chicago summer night, like tonight, it was very refreshing indeed. Too bad it all started before I could find my tripod, holding the camera still for a 30 second exposure is impossible. In the end I decided better tired arms and blurry treetops than no shot! Also that strange cloud on the lower right, is a funnel cloud!
Decided to throw a couple more in, after I realized I had captured a funnel cloud in my shots, sorry for the blurriness!
©Rena Katinas
©Rena Katinas
©Rena Katinas
Weekly Photo Challenge: Worn
©Rena Katinas
I’m glad there is no shortage of “worn” in my neighborhood! Pictured above is a small portion of my neighbor’s garage door. Unfortunately I shot this about a half an hour before sunset, which would’ve been great if it were facing west (it faces east.) The next sunny morning that comes along, I’ll be back.
Dealing With Multiple White Balance Settings in Lightroom and Photoshop
German Baptist Deaconess Home and Hospital Society (formerly) ©Rena Katinas
I walk past what was once the Baptist Girls Home pictured above, most evenings. The stair entrance is painted mint green and the combination of it with fluorescent light gives it this sickly green glow that I wanted to document with a photograph in case someone had a sudden case of good sense and changed the color/lighting combination.
Once I brought the image into Lightroom 3 for development, I realized I had two different light sources in the shot and each had a different white balance setting. You can see in the set of photos below, that neither white balance in the left and middle image works on a whole. Even though I like the green in the Tungsten (left) version, it’s not a true color representation of the subject. The fluorescent version (middle) is right on the money as far as the stairwell and wood door are concerned, but it throws the color of everything else completely out of wack. Normally I would go to the Hue/Saturation/Luminance panel in Lightroom, to deal with off color, but I wanted to work on the wood door without affecting the brick’s color. A HSL panel within the Adjustment Brush would be a really nice thing right about now! There isn’t one, so the next best thing is Layer Masks in Photoshop.
White Balance from left to right: tungsten, fluorescent, and tungsten/fluorescent combined
I put the Tungsten version on the topmost layer, including a layer mask and the Fluorescent version below. After I removed most of the door and stairwell in the layer mask, I realized that I had forgotten the third light source, the street light behind me and the bottom step which had a mix of all three light sources. Using a brush set at 10% opacity, I was able to decide the light source percentages for each plane of the lower half of the steps and the sidewalk, by selectively painting back into, or removing from the mask layer of the channels palette.
Mask in channels palette
Once I put the almost final image in this post, I noticed three blue shadows, that must have something to do with the change in color space from Photoshop to the browser window, so I’ll have to figure out what’s going on there. Bottom line, it would be nice if there were a way to have multiple white balances along with Hue/Saturation/Luminosity, using the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom, but thank goodness for my old friend, Photoshop’s layer mask feature until then!
Weekly Photo Challenge: Water
©Rena Katinas
I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do for this week’s Photo Challenge. Our city rests on an inland sea, a beautiful one, but a picture of Lake Michigan as a whole is just a bit too literal for me. I considered doing some sort of something or other with glasses of water, but my family seems to be hoarding all the water glasses in their bedroom. I thought I was going to have to opt out of this week’s challenge. Wouldn’t you know it, today turned out to be one of those wonderful rainy spring days, the kind that turn the sky so dark, you have to turn the lights on at noon. Really dark stormy days are so rare, and I love them. Pictured above is a close-up of water droplets on my window screen, or Lake Michigan in very tiny bits.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Tiny
©Rena Katinas
This week I have not one but two photos, taken at 18th and Wentworth, down by the railroad tracks. These thistles or weeds are on their own, there isn’t much nature to be found in the immediate area. The second image is just me having a little fun in Photoshop!
©Rena Katinas
Weekly Photo Challenge: Wildlife
©Rena Katinas
Wildlife in Chicago isn’t abundant, mostly rats and stray cats in my neighborhood. I found this guy or gal chilling at the boat yards along the Chicago River, on the south side. It’s some kind of insect, I know that much. Maybe it’s a cicada, or a grasshopper, not sure how to tag this… “mystery bug”? If there are any bug-people out there, (bug enthusiasts or people who believe they have been genetically altered with bug DNA – I’m not picky) if you know what this is, let me know!
Gettin’ My Scribble On
scribble©2011 Rena Katinas
My little painting area is in total disarray right now. I became so frustrated with my attempt to rearrange for not only my right handedness but for my easel to face, god forbid, light, that I just left everything in a state of mid-rearrange. It’s now becoming my white whale and I’ve chosen the time-honored tactic of avoidance to deal with it over the last few nights.
What’s the best way to avoid doing things you should be doing? Corel Painter! (Also GarageBand, but I don’t want to confuse things further.) Why spend your late nights figuring out how build a large tabouret that won’t fall over without the aid of wood or tools, when my computer already has a studio filled with art supplies that are organized and easy to find.
I tend to do a lot of doodling and scribbling, after I first open Painter, it’s a good way to warm up and free my mind. So I scribbled away, lost in the zone listening to Panjabi MC, only half paying attention to the marks I was laying out. When I stopped, I realized my jamming to Indian hip hop scribble had turned into some sort of figurative scribble by accident and I was pleased!
Mango Molested Because Camera Won’t Play Nice
©2011 Rena Katinas
I found a mango in the fridge and thought it would be a nice subject to bring into Corel Painter. So I plopped it on various pieces of watercolor paper I had painted to use for drawing grounds and proceeded to shoot some photos. Then I realized my lens’ auto focus motor is definitely dead, s#@%t! After manually bracketing some shots, because my camera doesn’t do that automatically either, I thought why not make some fairly serviceable RAW files look kind of insane. Once I began post-processing them in Photoshop, I began to realize I had done that mango wrong. Digitally molesting mangos by tone mapping them in Photomatix won’t make you feel better about your broken lens motor, but it’s pretty fun, if you can get past that dirty feeling.
Who Wants to Play Zombie Run! in Palmer Square?
©2010 Rena Katinas
Took a photo of Palmer Square and thought I’d have a little fun with it in Photoshop. I’m fairly happy with the results. This is my dog’s favorite spot in Logan Square, a favorite among babies and friendly dogs alike. I would love to get a game of Zombie Run! going here, as Palmer Square is a good 2 blocks long. Plus there’s just enough people stranger than us hanging about, that no one would notice myself and a group of friends running from invisible zombies. Anyone?
He’s Here!
I can’t think of a better photographic subject, than my beautiful brand new grandson, (who’s birth I was lucky enough to witness, yay!) Connor, born March 07, 2010. (Young grandmas rule, by the way!) We’re all really happy, he’s healthy, darn cute and cuddly and very loved! Below is a picture of Connor with his dad!
Caption Box Rammed Down Unsuspecting User’s Throat
I have no idea how pictures I grabbed on the Blue Line from my phone, ended up in my Media Library on WordPress, or why I can only put text in this caption box when using images from Media Library in a post, or how to get rid of this dumb caption box, which is ugly and out of place with this theme. Hmmm.
My Friend Has Red Shoes
photo ©2009 Rena Katinas
Only weirdos and degenerates don’t love red shoes. On a side note, thank you Moll for being six feet tall and always willing to model for me!
Last Shot Of The Day
©Rena Katinas
This shot would have been useless if it had not been for Adobe Lightroom and that I switched to shooting in RAW format that day. As I was heading towards the subway, I thought I’d grab a quick shot across Daley Plaza. I metered for the sky, which left everything else black. My second shot, meant to expose for the architecture was ruined by a bus. I was without a tripod, so getting another shot in perfect registration wasn’t going to happen. Plus I was running late and needed to get home so I could get ready to see the new Star Trek movie, so I figured the shot was lost.
I couldn’t toss such a cool sky and imported it into Adobe Lightroom any way. Once it was in my library, I made a second virtual copy and brought out the mid-tones and highlights. I left the original copy with the exposed sky alone. I exported both copies to Photoshop, and opened them separately. It was easiest (laziest) to magic wand the black buildings silhouettes, saving the selection for use with both files. Then it was just a matter of pasting the sky into the second image.
It’s definitely not perfect, an image THAT underexposed, really has no business being corrected to that level in Lightroom, there is some color fringing on the edges that may have been correctable, or not. At least now I know that in a pinch, when I’m caught without my tripod, I can still sandwich “multiple” images, with just one (hopefully better exposed) RAW image and Adobe Lightroom.
The original image on the left, extremely underexposed for the sky, and the adjusted virtual copy on the right-a real testament to Adobe Lightroom.
Finally! I Can Shoot In RAW Format
I’ve been waiting forever and ever to buy a camera that shoots RAW images. It was worth the wait, I now love Adobe Lightroom even more than ever. Now I can use it to it’s full potential and while away the hours digitally developing film.
Bought A New Camera!
Finally a brand new DSLR for me, yay! The menu system is more complex than my Olympus, so I’ve some reading and test shooting to do. My Olympus isn’t going into the dustbin just yet, it still takes great macro shots with the macro convertor lens. Plus it’s pretty sensitive to infrared light for a non-modded camera, so it’ll still come in handy.
Wanted: Underwear For This Man
My friend John and I saw this guy, standing in front of the Armitage-Western-Milwaukee Walgreens. John isn’t gay and I’m not into overly-tanned, shiny guys, but it’s really hard not to notice those glowing orange shorts.
photos courtesy of John Clark III ©2009
The Inauguration of President Barack Obama – The Big Picture – Boston.com
This is a beautiful collection of photographs taken during the Inauguration in Washington D.C. and other parts of the world:
The Inauguration of President Barack Obama – The Big Picture – Boston.com
Why Is My Landlady Sitting In The Snow In -41° Cold?
That’s her on the right upper half edge of the picture, my landlady, sitting on a yellow paint bucket… in the snow… it’s negative 41 degrees with the windchill outside. I don’t know what she’s doing or why, but that’s par for the course around here.
