580 - Two of Us



These are the images of yesterday, Thursday. Not exactly my most productive day, but nevertheless I could take some images on my way home.

Both images for today were shot with the Sigma 30/1.4, my most-used lens at the moment. It’s funny, at any time I have such a lens that I keep on the camera almost all the time, and that I return to quickly, after I have been forced to change. The 30/1.4 was hardly used at all for almost half a year, now it’s back in fashion.

The first image, the flowers, was more of a safe image to fall back, should everything else fail. These flowers grow in a park that I pass by when leaving work. I have no idea what they are called. Anybody?

When I had already given up searching, shortly before I arrived home, I saw what you see in the Image of the Day, a twisted wooden stick in front of a local flower shop, in extreme side light, lit by the low sun.

I took two exposures, one horizontal, one vertical, and when I inspected them later, none was satisfying. The horizontal had this very delicately curved shadow that vanished in the corner, but it lacked the light stripe at the right side. The vertical had this stripe, but the best part of the shadow was missing and the lower part of what was left of the shadow was plump.

What you see here is a combination of the two images, made using Photoshop’s “Auto-Align Layers” and “Auto-Blend Layers” functions. Both are new in CS3 and they are one of the many reasons why it’s a good idea to upgrade, even when you have a camera that is supported by an earlier version. In my case, with my Nikon D300, I didn’t have the choice anyway. As an incentive to upgrade, Adobe chose to make Camera RAW 4 incompatible with CS2 and to not support new cameras in Camera RAW 3 🙂

The Song of the Day is “Two of Us”, of course from the 1970 Beatles album “Let It Be”. See a video on YouTube.


There are 5 comments

Bill Birtch   (2008-05-17)

Simple and elegant, very nice.
I believe those are geraniums.

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andreas   (2008-05-17)

Yes, Geraniums, that's it. Thanks Bill, You're a genius 🙂

Which reminds me to visit your site again ... cough ..

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Thomas   (2008-05-17)

Nice, calm, zen-picture. Feels like the start of a relaxed evening...

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andreas   (2008-05-18)

Oh, it was 🙂

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pnfphotography   (2008-05-23)

I LOVE this...very plane jane for you but speaks volumes...love the simplicity of it and the calming color. I did not know you did calming colors....grin...your work is awesome!

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