Colors of autumn

Blogs sometimes are delayed when the writer/photographer is in drift mode, taking photographs.  I have been shooting the autumn, which in our end of the Rocky Mountains this year is spectacular.  So my duty for today is to lay color at eye level for your viewing.

Bizarre as it may seem, this little creature caught my eye near Taos Ski Valley.  Insects are absolutely not my area of expertise, but this one has distinctive identifiers called "lashes".  As far as I can tell, it is the caterpillar stage of a tussock moth of some sort.

No identifier on this one.  Just a splash of color.

And what would autumn in the Rockies be without an aspen or two?

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

pieces make the whole

Nearly four weeks beyond the vernal equinox, evidence of spring is becoming more apparent on a daily basis.  Even at elevations above 7,000 feet, fruit trees and bulbs, both wild and domestic, are beginning to bloom, leaving behind a riot of color and textures.

Daffodil bulbs are some of the first to emerge from the ground, blooming soon after.  The bits and pieces that comprise the daffodil flower are today's study.

Life presents endless opportunities for photography at any place or any time, but in the spring, the increased daylight and warmth raise the spirit.  It is a great and varied time to take your camera out and discover the world again.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

gifts

It has been a tradition with me of giving photographs in return when someone presents me with a gift of nature - flowers, eggs, honey, fruit - and that tradition continued this week.

Carrie and Mike, tango dancers extraordinaire and teachers, gave me a beautiful bouquet of tulips and snapdragons last week.  I put them in water and admired them, but of course, the following afternoon, with two different cameras in hand, I began to study and photograph them.  You probably know me well enough by now from reading my blog, that I sometimes cannot resist altering photographs in either Lightroom or PhotoShop.  My contention still and always will be that a photographer must take a good image with the camera.  PhotoShop does not fix problems in a photograph, just as wine does not improve with age if it didn't begin life as an excellent vintage.

With that in mind, here are images that are both unaltered and altered.  The only alteration to the snapdragon shot below is cropping to emphasize detail.

One tulip straight up, the other with a twist, adjusted using filtration, tint, and exposure in Lightroom.

Finally, an image cropped, resulting in the look of a botanical print.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

Hello, Winter!

Timing is everything, and the weather forecasters had a devil of a time predicting the latest winter storm to arrive in New Mexico.  Since its arrival on Saturday, some nice winter portraits have presented themselves.  I wanted to share a few with you.

Despite the fact that their pollen gives many in the Southwest heck several times of year, junipers have some of the most photogenic bark during any season.

On Sunday morning, branches not only held snow but the most amazing hoar frost.  Instead of being lacy, it attached itself in chunks, like rock salt, on the pinon needles.

The closer I got, the more interesting the details became.

Despite the cold, winter is a great season for photography.  Bundle up.  Tuck the old camera inside your jacket to keep the batteries warm, and head out to shoot!

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

Brush strokes

One of the elements I love in oil paintings other than the subject matter and the use of color is the brush stroke.  Last week, nature painted our windows with a frost featuring some of the most interesting strokes I have seen.  At first glance, as in the image below, it seems that the frost was composed of connected dots.

But closer examination shows that the dots were actually feathers.

And this is where it really gets good.  These are the original brush strokes - details from middle of the first photograph.  What a painting!

By double clicking on the photographs, you can see even more  detail.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

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