Framedlight

I was pretty pleased with the pictures I took of the stone tree in Bolivia (see previous blog) so I thought I would share with you some of the versions of one picture I made when post processing. I always start with opening up the pictures in Lightroom 4. I then produced one straightforward picture just using the adjustments in Lightroom I then took this picture in to Nik Color Efex Pro 4 and used the Tonal Contrast filter to bring out some of the detail and add a bit of punch. I then used the reflector Efex to open up the dark area inside the 'tree' and slightly reduce the tree's shadow. I used this picture as a base for the others. I then worked further on this picture. Back in Color Efex I used a custom filter to give a high key image, which makes it look a little post apocalyptic. I also took the base image and again in Color Efex used the Polaroid Transfer filter to give a bit of smear and a softer look. I quite like this effect. Here ...

Oh the joys of digital photography! I took so many pictures on our salt flat tour it has taken an age to sort and process them. This is the problem with tours that are not  photographic. You might get only 15 minutes at a location, so the tendency is to shotgun the area in case you miss something . There is simply no time to absorb and digest the information in front of you. You probably would not believe this, with the number of photographs I am posting, but I use the blog as a small 'sorting agent'. I find that seeing my photographs in a different location helps to distance them and make me more objective.  Deleting photographs is so difficult. After lunch we drove for about an hour through the Siloli desert till we reached some strange rocks, carved by the wind in to weird shapes. We had been alone in the desert until then, but the rocks drew in a host of four wheel drive vehicles and their tourist occupants who were busy climbing over the stones to get good pictures of ...