365/5

I can already tell that the days I work, Monday thru Thursday, are going to be difficult. But no matter! I will try my best. I know I'm late on this entry but I did take this on the correct day so...it counts! What happens when I'm on vacation? Or if my internet doesn't work? The point of this project is to take a photo a day and work towards improvement. I will do my best to post before midnight but I can't guarantee that I will. I can, however, strive to take a photo each day.

I took this shot tonight, waiting at the gatehouse of the community where my boyfriend lives. I live in South Florida, and I always thought that the winter/holiday decor seemed a bit out of place in the tropical
suburbs.

I did a bit of post processing*- the photo was a bit dark because I refuse to use the built-in flash.  But I think I did a good job. I like how the colors came out. It's not as artsy as I'd like it to be. That's something I'd like to concentrate more on.

What this shot made me learn, though, is that having your camera with you everywhere you go pays off. I took this shot, like I said, while waiting in line, in my car, with the window rolled down and the camera resting on the car window- a makeshift tripod. If I hadn't brought my DSLR I wouldn't have gotten this photo. And if I didn't have this blog to motivate me to pull out the giant contraption in the first place to even take this shot while looking like a total weirdo to everyone in line, well, I probably would not have done it.

But that's the whole point of this. To learn and push and improve and experiment.


























*Just a quick run-down on the post-processing:

I did it in Photoshop CS4, first I ran it through the Reduce Noice filter at full strength (the photo was taken at 1600 ISO so it had a lot of grain) and then brought out more color by converting it to Lab Mode and tweaking the channels (check out this tutorial- I followed it and then turned it into a custom action so it's easy as pie!), then converting back to RGB and setting that layer to Screen. This is a great way to make a dark photo brighter. This depends on the photo itself, of course. You can set the layer to Overlay or Soft Light if it's not so dark and it'll just boost the colors.