Fall Colours

I finally got my camera back from Japan(!), and have had to pretty much re-learn everything about it. It's gone fairly quickly, though, so I'm happy. Here are some of the fruits of my labours.

I don't even know what kind of berries these are.

A garland of (faux) berries makes our chandelier festive.

Elly charmed me with a wink as she nestled into the pillows on my bed.

Brian made a spectacular sandwich.
(That's cheese dripping down the slice of bread.)
Photographing food is surprisingly difficult.

The following three pictures were manipulated in Photoshop, using the High Dynamic Range (HDR) automation. My first attempt (the pears) turned out quite well with almost no difficulty, but several of the ones I tried after that had "ghosts" or odd "burnt-out" spots. Still, it's a fun new technique. A lot of the dramatic landscape pictures you see have been edited with HDR software of one kind or another. Basically, it takes three or more pictures at different exposures or different "white balances" and merges them together for a picture with a lot of visual depth.

My Sunday lunch. (It's impossible to eat a ripe pear without making a mess.)

From the back yard. Loving these colours!

Sedum enjoying the dappled sunlight. (Thank you again, Raeanne!)

In case you're curious (because I always am), here is an example of how my pictures change with editing. It also shows the difference between what you can do with Picnik (which still makes a big improvement to the image) and what you can do with Photoshop. (SOOC = Straight out of the camera)

Click to enlarge.

So what are you doing for fun these days?