Sunday, January 30, 2011

Sunset Sunday (kind of) - Golden Gate Bridge

Colors In My Mind
For those of you new to my blog, I need to mention that I make no secret of the fact that my work is a blend of photography and artistic editing.  Often I do very little editing, but then there are times when I go hog wild!  Depends on the subject, the photograph and/or my mood!  I love to use HDR, textures, actions, numerous photo editing programs and techniques.... all possible in this amazing digital age. 
This photo is a case in point.  I loved the simplicity of the composition, but with a plain, boring sky, it was just, well, too plain and boring!  So I made it into a sunset!

24 comments:

Sarah Knight said...

Lovely. I'm an illustrator, so no worries on the "editing" front; I do it all the time.

Anne said...

WoWWW!!! all this spesial pictures beside the bridge, and what a bridge! the very best bridge Karen, and the very best pictures also :-)
Liked them all a lot, looking and looking when drinking my early cup of coffe here in Norway :-)

Unknown said...

Karen, nice job! I would never have guessed!

Unknown said...

You did an amazing job - this is gorgeous!!!

Joop Zand said...

Fantastic Karen.... very well done.

have a nice sunday.

Greetings, Joop

Arnhild said...

Amazingly beautiful colors and lovely composed! :)

diane b said...

It is a very pretty picture. There s a very fine line between art and photography. In fact no line as they intermingle often like in this shot. What is HDR?

Lisa said...

Stunning . I love what you did .

MadSnapper said...

and i am so glad you always do something specail. it is beautiful and GO DIGITAL.... you are so talented in taking it a step beyond

Scott Law said...

And it is a beauty too!

What Karen Sees said...

Hi diane! HDR is a process where you combine several different exposures of the same scene into one. You would do this because a camera cannot take a single shot of all the light values from dark to light that the eye can see. That's why if you take a photo of a landscape that has a beautiful bright blue sky and also interesting shadow detail in the land, often, when you take just a single shot, the sky is blown out and not nearly as pretty as what you saw. Or if you purposefully exposure for the sky, then the land is too dark. Your camera just can't cover the great light range that your eye can see. If you take separate shots, first exposing for the land, then the sky, and combine them, you have a better approximation of what you actually saw, and your shot is richer, more colorful, etc. The hardest part of doing this is getting at least 3 exact shots which means using a tripod or a VERY steady hand. After that, there are programs, (I recommend Nix HDR Pro, or Photomatix that do the combining then let you tweak to your heart's content.)

Chad said...

I like texures and shadows.To me this is my favorite picture of the Golden Gate Bridge that you have posted. PS I'm still around,but I was spending too much time on the computer.I've got to find the middle ground.Between meeting I may try to post one today.Even though I haven't been leaving comments I do view your post most every day.

Ruth Hiebert said...

The 'sunset' is a nice touch to the image.
Ruth

darlin said...

Karen this is fantastic! I love your work, if you can call what you're so passionate about work. :-)

Don said...

I'm with you. I like my photos straight, crooked, textured, colorized, upside down, stepped on, desaturated, duplicated, torn, burnt, scratched, faded, ripped off, crumpled, dunked, fried, Photoshopped, Lightroomed, buried, dug up, and buried again.

That's why they call it art. :)

jennyfreckles said...

I love to look at your edited photos and it's great that you will share what you did, so we can learn. It's people like you that inspire me to get better as a photographer and editor.

Stephani Cochran said...

A beautiful Photo Karen. More motivation for me to learn more about photo editing programs.

Ginny Hartzler said...

A nice bit of work!! My camera will do this, but I don't have the software.

Thoughtfully Blended Hearts said...

You made it beautiful!!!

Rick said...

Nice job on this one Karen - the 'sunset' really brings out the structure !

Dawning Inspiration said...

I love to edit and have fun - play and see what I can create!! This is gorgeous!

黄清华 Wong Ching Wah said...

Gorgeous tones

SouthernSass said...

Great edit! It looks dreamy and soft.... :)

Anonymous said...

Fantastic Karen!