the Zen of Zann

Leaf on Reflection

zannwalker — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:34:45 +0000

Since I acquired an iPhone several months ago, I’ve done a lot of experimenting with its amazing 8-megapixel camera and various photography apps that I’ve picked up.

I decided it’s time to start sharing some of these shots on my blog!

Here’s one that I took today on our front porch. It was raining outside, and I was able to capture the reflection of one of our trees in the puddle of water at my feet. The leaf that was lying near the puddle gives a sense of scale and anchors the photo in time…winter in the South.

This shot was taken using Instagram.

View on Instagram • Sent via InstagalleryLeaf on Reflection

By Suzanne Hight (@zannwalker)

Sent from my iPad

Back to Jerome

zannwalker — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 04:04:27 +0000

It’s been dreary, foggy, and rainy here in Tupelo, with little daylight for photography on these short winter days. So I went back to the archives, pulled out some brackets from our March 2011 trip to Jerome, and churned out a little HDR love for you guys. This was taken at the Gold King Mine ghost town, just north of downtown Jerome. It’s a photographer’s paradise, especially if you’re into HDR. Enjoy!

(HDR from five bracketed images, combined in Photomatix V4. Post-processing in Paintshop Photo Pro X4, using Topaz Adjust 5.)

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Natural Zen in Sepia

zannwalker — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 03:30:31 +0000

Today was kind of strange. It was Christmas Eve Eve, and a Friday at that, so it was a day that I really didn’t expect to get much work done. But, adding to the weirdness of the day, my work laptop somehow acquired a virus, so it’s been out of commission since day before yesterday. I spent hours on Skype with our helpdesk yesterday trying to get my system up and running, to no avail. So today they’re shipping me a replacement laptop, which should arrive early next week.

There wasn’t much I could do today, other than check my email (using my own personal computer) and respond as necessary–and I only received two emails that required responses. By lunchtime I was ready to get out of the house and away from the computer. So even though it was a gray, overcast day, I decided to do a little shooting. I’ve been wanting to take some Zen-inspired photos to have framed for my home office, and I thought today would be the perfect time to do that.

Andy went with me on the excursion, and we drove out to Elvis Presley Lake, just north of where we live. We had not been there yet, so we weren’t sure what to expect in the way of photo ops. We found a nice lake with camping spots, picnic tables, boat ramps and fishing piers, and very nice bath and shower facilities.

I wanted to get some shots using very shallow depth of field, so I used my 50mm prime lens. We found a spot where there were some downed trees near the water’s edge, and I took a few shots before the cold wind literally drove us back to the car. Here are three that I processed this afternoon, using Paintshop Photo Pro X4 and Topaz Black & White Effects using the Sepia presets. I sized these to be 5 x 7′s, and I’m going to have them mounted in 8 x 10 or 8.5 x 11 frames to go in my office. I used similar processing on each one as I want them to be displayed as a set:

After warming up for just a minute, we walked over the hill where the wind was a little less biting, and took some shots of the boat docks and the fishing pier. There was a large sign on the pier that said “No Swimming”. Just a few yards from the entrance to the pier, I found this lying on the bed of pine needles, and couldn’t resist grabbing a quick photo to be processed in Topaz Adjust. Needless to say, this image will NOT be joining the others on my office wall, but I did find the photo to be oddly compelling:

From South Mountain to Ahwatukee

zannwalker — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 02:57:36 +0000

Tonight I decided to pull out some old brackets and do some HDR processing, using the new Topaz Adjust and Topaz Black & White Effects plug-ins that I’ve recently acquired.

I found this set of brackets that I shot from the top of South Mountain Park in Phoenix, on a partly-cloudy afternoon just after a storm front had moved through. From the top of South Mountain, there was a clear view of the suburb of Ahwatukee, and the remaining clouds were still dramatic enough to really lend a sense of scale to the landscape. From the to of South Mountain, you can almost see forever!

I shot these brackets with my 14-24mm Nikkor wide-angle lens, using my Nikon D700 camera mounted on a tripod. I processed the brackets in Photomatix 4, then edited the resulting TIFF in Paintshop Photo Pro X4. First I used Topaz Adjust to correct exposure and bump up the clarity slightly. I then added a layer using Topaz Black & White Effects, using the low-key preset which I adjusted slightly to add some detail. I lowered the opacity of this layer, as I just wanted to add a little drama to the clouds, especially where the sun was filtering through.

Today, we closed on the sale of our home in Arizona, so we no longer have any real estate ties to the Phoenix area. I guess this image is a little bit of nostalgia for a place that I really did enjoy living and photographing. I’ll still be returning there several times a year for work, so hopefully this won’t be the last time I see such a magnificent landscape as this through my viewfinder.

Topaz Lens Effects – Tilt Shift in Jerome

zannwalker — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:00:33 +0000

You know how I love the Topaz suite of plug-ins. Topaz Adjust is my go-to plug-in for making my images pop, and Topaz DeNoise does an excellent job of getting rid of those ugly pixels from low-light images. Just recently I added Topaz Black & White effects to my toolbox, and I love the wide choice of presets and sliders that give the user total control of the resulting image.

So when I got the latest email from Topaz announcing a major upgrade to their Lens Effects plug-in, I jumped at it. I did not have this plug-in already, but through a special offer that’s good from now through Christmas Eve, I was able to purchase it new at the upgrade prices of $29.99.

The main reason I wanted to have this particular tool was to try my hand at the effect known as tilt/shift. I don’t have a tilt/shift lens in my gear collection, but this plug-in does a pretty decent job of mimicking the effect through some judicious blurring of parts of the image.

If you’re not familiar with tilt/shift, the effect is meant to take an image from the real world and make it look like it’s a toy or a model. Ideally, the image is shot from an overhead vantage point (visualize looking down at a model train on a table). The idea is to have some small part of the image be in sharp focus while the rest of the image is blurred, making it look like a small toy model of what it really is.

Here’s my first attempt at the tilt/shift effect, using Topaz Lens Effects. This photo was made in Jerome, Arizona, from the balcony of the Grand Hotel looking down upon the town in the early morning sunrise. This is the original unedited version:

Unedited original image - Jerome, Arizona

Now here is the edited version, using the tilt/shift preset in Topaz Lens Effects:

Edited with Tilt/Shift preset in Topaz Lens Effects

Notice how the pickup truck in the middle of the image begins to look like a toy model with the blurred foreground and background? Pretty cool, huh?

I can’t wait to try out some more images using this effect, as well as the other presets that are included with this plug-in! If you’re interested in trying it for yourself, here’s the link to the Topaz product page, and be sure to use the coupon code “simplefocus” that’s good through 12/24/2011. (And no, I’m not affiliated with Topaz and don’t get a cut!)

BFF’s in the Christmas Parade

zannwalker — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:03:14 +0000

Yeah, I know I said I was wrapping up the series of images from the Tupelo Christmas parade, but there’s still a few that I just had to share.

I couldn’t resist this one. These three little girls just looked so cute in their Santa hats and reindeer antlers, even as their facial expressions made it plain they were ready for the whole event to be over with! They were just adorable!

I’m really getting antsy to do some more shooting, but unfortunately it’s pretty difficult on my schedule. There just isn’t enough daylight in my non-working hours during the week, and the weekends have been pretty hectic getting ready for the holidays. I may have to resort to doing some creative things in the studio before long!

Parades Are For Children (Mostly)

zannwalker — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:49:33 +0000

Continuing my series of images from the 2011 Christmas Parade in Tupelo, Mississippi:

I love taking candid shots of kids–their faces can’t lie. You know when they’re happy or sad, tired or excited, bored or angry.

We had positioned ourselves on the sidewalk along Main Street toward the end of the parade route. I wanted to be near the judges’ viewing stand because I knew that the marching bands and floats would be stopping to perform in front of the judges. By the time the parade got to where we were located, the participants had been marching or riding for about an hour, not including the time they spent getting organized before the parade even started.

Little kids get tired and bored pretty quickly, and even though they’re in a parade, they haven’t yet learned that they’re supposed to “put on a happy face”. And that’s when you get the really good shots!

This guy had been riding this toy pony for awhile, and I think he was ready to dismount:

And this little girl was obviously bored with the whole thing and was ready to go “off the wagon”:

I have so many more images from the parade, but they’re pretty standard stuff….snapshot quality, mostly. But we had a great time, met some really nice people, and I’ve had plenty of images to use while getting acquainted with the new versions of Paintshop Photo Pro X4 and Topaz Adjust 5.

Observing the Observer

zannwalker — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 03:59:40 +0000

Continuing my series of images from the Tupelo Christmas Parade:

I love my 28-300mm zoom lens. It gives me such flexibility when I’m in a situation where I can’t control the distance between myself and that interesting subject matter that presents itself. Sometimes you just need that telephoto capability to capture that candid moment when your subject has no idea they’re being observed, much less photographed.

While we were watching the parade, I noticed several people across the street watching the scene from the upstairs windows. Most of them had the windows open, leaning out to get a great view and hear the marching bands. But this guy either could not open the window, or chose not to. In fact, he looked a little bit put out that the parade was disturbing the routine of his Saturday morning.

Nah, I’m sure the sun was just in his eyes and that’s why he was squinting like that.

Christmas Parades Need Veterans

zannwalker — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 02:57:45 +0000

Continuing my series of images from last weekend’s Christmas parade in downtown Tupelo, Mississippi:

People in this part of the country are probably a little more unabashedly patriotic than people in other locales, but I don’t know of any town where the sight of grizzled old veterans of past wars doesn’t bring a lump to the throat. There were several veterans and military groups marching or riding in this year’s parade, but this was my favorite–the Veterans of the Korean War, known as “The Forgotten War”.

There’s just something about the evident camaraderie and shared life experience that appears in the lined faces of these guys that appeals to the heart of any American, young or old. I love them all, but my favorite is the guy in the back in the green fatigues and helmet, holding the American flag. Don’t you think he looks just like Leslie Neilsen?

Christmas Parades Need Motorcycles

zannwalker — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 02:21:50 +0000

Continuing my series from last weekend’s Tupelo Christmas Parade:

Motorcycles were a big thing in the Christmas parade, starting with the ones ridden by the officers from the Tupelo Police Department that escorted the parade marchers down Main Street. Tupelo’s finest were looking pretty spiffy on their personalized bikes. Here’s Officer Alan Chavers, if the name on his bike is accurate:

I used Paintshop Photo Pro X4 to process the shot, and Topaz Adjust 5 to accentuate the detail a little bit.

There were several groups of motorcycle enthusiasts who participated in the parade. This spirited couple was part of the Underground Ryderz Motorcycle Club, who absolutely had the LOUDEST bikes in the parade. I decided to do a little color popping in this shot:

On this shot, I decided to go with black and white processing, using Topaz Black and White Effects, adding a little bit of grain but color-popping the two Santa hats. Kind of a fun effect, I think!