Tim’s Ramblings

A 2nd pack of my favorite textures came out today and I can’t be more excited!!

She did a fantastic job once again and this time the textures are right up my alley. Far more vintage than before it seems. With these combined with the original I have almost limitless editing possibilities and it is just so so exciting. :) Can you tell I’m excited?

http://www.florabellacollection.blogspot.com/

These are not just fun to play with but these can give my all too mediocre photos an extra kick that really brings out the inner emotion if used right. Sometimes it’s subtle. Sometimes it’s in your face. I know this type of post processing isn’t for everyone but dammit, this is just too fun!

So here are 6 that I did tonight while experimenting with all the new textures. Most of these have been posted before but now have been processed with the new set of textures. All of these can be clicked for a bigger version and I encourage you to do so since you can really see the fine detail that way. Oh, and as usual, you are free to use these photos for personal use! :)

I love how this first one turned out. This was a tree I shot at Bradley Woods Reservation in the snow. But now? Man I love these new textures (have I said that enough yet?).

This is the same shot as the one from earlier this week on the ice over Lake Erie. But the new textures lets me “antique” this to the extreme!

Ahhh…spring..

Some wonderful B&W textures too!!

And some fun with my favorite models :)

You’ll see lots more of these in the next few days…though I’ll be in Japan but we’ll see what we can do :) :)

This year we had a little get together at Ben and Laurie’s place. It was a small cozy group. It’s actually nice :D

Anyway, here’s a number of pics from last night. Some in color. Some in B&W. Click on the link to see the rest!

Ben’s sauerkraut and pork with sausage…looks so happy.

Laurie’s cheese plate.

And Laurie showing off her Hello Kitty ice pack.

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Here are the rest of the first batch of pics from tonight. 11 total :)

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Still experimenting with various looks. The whole classic car and the hair styles of the bride and bridesmaids all scream “vintage”. But vintage can mean many things. Old yellowed photos on glass? Scratched up glass plates? Grainy B&W? Sepia? Or bring it closer to modern times with over saturated greens of a Lomo? Or desaturated look of an older range finder?

So it’s still in the experimental phase. Of course, any and all reactions, comments, critiques are all welcome as long as they’re not in the “THIS SUCKS!!” category (or you can say that as long as you explain yourself too!).

Some shots were taken by J. Some were by me. Edits by me.

:)

There’s a good number of them so I will put most under a cut.

The wedding dress.

She forgot her lines… :)

The rings! See? I can just do standard color photo edits too! :)

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So…been parsing through the 1700+ photos I took on Saturday off and on since Saturday night. I have now narrowed it down to about 500 photos and from there I need to do even more weeding…

But in the meantime, here are 7 other photos that I have edited, mostly B&W and/or vintage style. The older guy in the hat is the driver for their 1950’s Buick that they got. Some of these were taken by J and I did the post processing.

Not all will be edited to this degree. This is also a part of me doing a bit of experimenting with some new actions and other Photoshop or Lightroom techiniques. After all, not all B&W’s are alike! There are subtle shading that you can do to bring out different moods.

:)

:)

I realized I only ever posted these photos on Facebook!

This past weekend I went to the Carolinas to see U2 with my friend M :) She lives in Columbia, SC so I flew into there and then from there her and I drove up to Raleigh, NC to see them.

It was awesome. We had general admission tickets so we got in line at a bit before 3. The doors opened at 5:30 or so. Muse was the opening band. And then it was U2! 2 full hours and we were right in front of the walkway probably at most 3 people back. And since we were juuust off to the middle, the every member of the band at one point stopped right in front of us to sing or play! I have to admit, it was pretty freakin’ awesome.

And they put on such a good show. I’m not a big U2 fan but their concerts always manage to blow me away. And the stage was ridiculous!

Anyway, on to the pics. 26 in all and they are linked to bigger versions.

Me and M just as we got in line :)

The stage.

And U2!

Click below to see the rest!

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Bought some new Photoshop textures from Florabella Textures today. They’re very very very nice. There’s a bunch of them including ones that give things a very light ethereal feel while others to give that antique feel.

I played around with a few. These are all a combination of anywhere from 3 to 6 or so textures and overlays. Just experimenting. But they are quite nice and I think I can have some good fun playing around with them. This is new territory for me. This goes beyond the standard photo realistic stuff and stuff based just on the manipulation of light. Pretty neat.

:)

If you want, you can see the originals here: http://photos.timarai.com/p790577333

Click on the thumbnail for a bigger version. Full size version if anyone is interested is also available below. Will be posting this on my photo gallery later once I get home (still on the road).

Puget Sounds in wide angle.

Full size version (over 2MB) = click

Puget Sounds in B&W.

Full size version (over 2MB) = click

:)

Just mucking around…

I should go to bed…

Here’s a shot of Tokyo Harbor with Tokyo Tower and the Rainbow Bridge in the background and party boats in the foreground. I took this last month so some of you may recognize it :)

You can click on it for a larger version (and without a watermark too!)

:)

I finally got around to framing some of my photos. :)

Two 8×10 black and whites from Matsushima.

:)