Spring Flutters

Just getting ready for our afternoon walkies yesterday when this landed in the back garden:

Looking a bit battered:

Peacock Butterfly

Then as we walked down the lane I spotted a couple of:

Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly

They took me by surprise as at 12.5C with a cold breeze it wasn't the warmest of recent days.

Mischief on Four Legs

Grey Squirrel

Web

Elements 10 with NIK filters

A Bit More Manipulation

I had another session in Aperture using the NIK filters from Google starting with a rather bland photograph taken at Covenham Reservoir:




This time I used the Viveza filter which enable me to place control points on various parts of the photo and make local adjustments, sometimes darkening, sometimes making a section lighter and other parts where contrast or definition were increased. That enabled me to bring out the clouds, make the sail appear as though light was shining through it, increasing the colour on the sailor's jacket and so on. Last of all I used the Dfine filter to reduce any noise introduced in the first process:

Monday Mystery - Guess What

It's not often I manage to confuse everyone enough to keep all the virtual Midmarsh Stars to myself but last week's mystery photo was one of those occasions when I showed a small part of a candle stick:

   

Maybe you will have better luck this week with this close shot.
Guess What:


Please leave any guesses in the comments.
They will be revealed, along with the answer, next Monday.
No prizes, just for fun and maybe a virtual Midmarsh Gold or Silver Star.

HDR

Many thanks to Adrian of Adrian's Images who happened to blog that Google had made their set of NIK filters free so I had a quick look and found they would work with two of the programs I have on the Mac: Aperture and Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, fully in Aperture v3.5.1 and all bar the HDR filter in Elements 10.

It was a quick, though large 600MB+ download, an easy installation followed by a quick online search to see where they could be found in each program.

I gave the filters each a quick look in Aperture and then chose a photo to try out the HDR filter:

The rather insipid original:


A bit of  a crop and then a look at some of the many pre-set choices, ending up with 'Deep 1' to give dramatic effect. It doesn't end there as there are many tweeks which can be applied. I used the 'Graduated Neutral Density' controls to finish with complete with a partial rotation of the filter to give more light on the left hand side:



That, for me, brought a dull photo to life with a bit of atmosphere. This was only a quick trial as there are more complex and localised changes which can be made with this set of filters but they will take more than a bit of research plus lots of trial and error to find out how to get the best out of them.

Making the Most of a Sunny Day

Friday turned out to be glorious. Very nearly wall to wall Sunshine with the temperature maximizing at just 1 point off 16C. On an extended walkies we went to see whether Stan's horses would be out in their paddock:



Yes, there they were wearing their coats to keep out a slightly chilly morning breeze:

 

Making the most of an opportunity to  eat some fresh grass:



Every now and then looking up to see what we were up to:








It won't be such nice weather today as we head towards wet and windy conditions.