I recently worked up some images for a competition with the theme "Ice."  I decided to go with self-portraits, which was an experience.  It turns out I have a LOT of bad angles.  Fortunately, out of the 400 that I took, I managed to have four or five that were acceptable after extensive photoshopping. :)  The interesting thing is that I don't think they actually look like me, which made them much easier to work on in post.

The first three have an ice texture that I made and overlaid to the images, the last one looked better without the overlay, but I still haven't decided exactly what to do with the background.  Now accepting suggestions :)

Enjoy!

So yes, Vogel State Park in Georgia.  We were there Saturday through Monday with a group of Bo's friends, but I didn't actually get back to Gainesville until Tuesday morning... and I drove straight to work.  So I really still feel like I just got back even though tomorrow is Thursday.

Saturday we spent most of the day around the park and had a nice group dinner in a warm cabin with some wine and a fireplace.  Sunday a couple girls got up and did a 5am hike... we slept in until the ripe hour of 9am.  We had our breakfast, washed the dishes, got some more firewood and got ourselves ready and then it took a while for everyone to get themselves (and their tiny children) ready.  So we had a leisurely family-friendly hike late in the afternoon and I spent some time taking photos while Bo was exploring potential bouldering areas just off the trail.  We had another lovely evening and planned a more serious hike for Monday morning.  Mountains here we come!

Well... it rained all morning.  Rain and rain and rain.  So we checked out, hung around until everyone else was on their way out as well as the rain slowed down and went up to Brasstown Bald.  It was incredibly foggy, which was really quite nice.  It was one of the few times you can feel totally safe while experiencing weather on a mountain. Apparently the view is really great from up there and you can see four states, but we could barely see each other so.... maybe next time :)

As before, the first one in the group gets the exif data and is the one that I'm using for the challenge.

Saturday

28-135 3.5-5.6 @75mm, f/5.6, 1/13sec, ISO 400, no flash, probably with polarization filter

My requisite sunflare shot (oh I have many from this trip!)

Pro tebe, Vašo!

Sunday

28-135 3.5-5.6 @135mm, f/5.6, 1/32sec, ISO 200, no flash, polarization filter

Monday

28-135 3.5-5.6 @90mm, f/5.6, 1/200sec, ISO 400, no flash, no filter

Sunday we went for a long walk at San Felasco.  The weather was perfect.  We made a few discoveries including an old cement and metal structure that looked like some kind of shallow cistern system, bitter orange trees, places that deer had been rubbing on the trees and peeled the bark off of, giant old live oaks, and we even found a horseshoe.  Animals were everywhere, which was quite nice.  We saw probably four or five armadillos that were totally oblivious to us, a woodpecker, we heard a turkey, and saw about 30 deer.  A lovely Sunday, if I may say so.

As with the quarry, I'll just post several images and count the first one as my requirement for the challenge.  I know this shot is fairly abstract and isn't really a picture of anything specific, but there is something about it I really like.  Maybe the negative space, lines, and the depth implied by the shallow depth of field (i.e., focus on one narrow plane so everything else is out of focus... the further away from that plane you get the more out of focus other objects become).  The color to this on is only very slightly modified.  I brought down the saturation a bit, but the original shot did have this warm, soft hue to it.  

I have started to use manual focus when working in an area of intricate detail at varying levels... imagine branches on a small tree or a situation like this that is just full of twigs, vines, and spanish moss.  I usually immediately find something interesting to focus on using the auto focus, but then I turn that off and slowly turn the manual focus ring to pick out something interesting at every plane that I might otherwise have missed.  It's really a good exercise for anyone working at a very narrow depth of field, I think.  You see things you hadn't expected.

50mm 1.4, f/1.8, 1/80, ISO 200, no flash

Don't these look like they are straight out of a Dr. Seuss book?

Today we were out for a Sunday drive in my lovely little car and found an old limestone quarry near Haille.  We had to get out and explore, of course.  We probably spent an hour down there walking around, throwing stones into the clear aqua water to try to guess how deep it was, watching fish, looking at fossils that fell out of the limestone, and enjoying the quiet.

Since it was so different from what you normally see here in oh-so-flat central Florida, I took quite a few shots.  We'll call the first one 'The One' for the challenge... even though it's a diptych... the rest are just bonus. :)  I was experimenting with trying to get a film feel to some of these images, so I embraced the sun flare and yellow-green tones in a handful of the photos.  The color of the water made a lovely background for some detail shots as well.  I would love to do a photoshoot here sometime...

28-135mm 3.5-5.6 @50, f/5.6, 1/400sec, ISO 400, no flash, polarization filter