A Photo a Week Challenge: Boats and Ships

We had the chance to cruise around the Hawaii Islands on this amazing (and way bigger than it looks in this image) cruise ship. When we landed at Kona on the Big Island, we had to take smaller tender boats (the orange crafts on the right) to get to shore. It was a lot of fun. I love being on boats of any size, large cruise liners to small fishing boats.

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO (OR MORE) FEATURING CRAFTS THAT MOVE ON THE WATER.

Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

1. Each week, I’ll come up with a theme and post a photo that I think fits. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Thursday, when the next photo theme will be announced.
2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “A Photo a Week Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ tag.
3. Come back here and post a link to your image in the comments for this challenge.
4. Follow nancy merrill photography so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements.

Cee’s Black & White Challenge: Engines

This is the engine of the boat we took from Lausanne to Chillon Castle on Lake Leman (aka Lake Geneva).

For more from this challenge, visit Cee’s Black & White Challenge: Things with Engines or Motors.

One Photo Focus: February

Last month, I found a great method for adding deeper colors to my photos, and I was really excited to try it out on this month’s One Photo Focus.

Here is the original photo, by Stacey at lens addiction:

When I opened the RAW file in Photoshop, I used the following settings in the RAW converter:

These settings got me to here:

For the final touches, I used an action that I created that I call Adding Deeper Color II. It includes adding two duplicate layers of the background, one with a setting of SoftLight and the other Multiply, with the Multiply layer on top of the SoftLight layer. For both layers, I added mask layers. I also added a Gaussian Blur at 15.0% to the Multiply layer. Then I used a soft brush set to Opacity 100% and black (to remove) and brushed over the boat and buildings on the Multiply layer. This is what I got:

Thanks to Stacy for hosting this fun challenge. For more from this challenge, visit One Photo Focus: February.

Click the image above for rules on joining the fun!

One Photo Focus October

It’s been a couple of months since I’ve had the chance to participate in one of Stacy Fischer’s One Photo Focus challenges. It feels good to be back.

This month, we received a photo from Michelle Lunato, a wonderful photographer, who provided this beautiful image for us to play with.

When I opened the RAW image, I made these adjustments first:

These settings gave me this image:

I loved the sun flare, but wanted to add a little lens flare to compliment it. I used these settings in the lens flare filter:

For instructions on using the lens flare filter on an “empty” layer, see this YouTube video.

So adding the flare created a nice, light effect:

I’ve been playing around with posterizing images lately, and thought this image lent itself nicely to some posterizing. I used these settings in the Photoshop Fine Art Gallery filter:

I really like how the filter gives the image a more defined look:

Finally, I wanted to give it more of a painting feeling, so I added a blank layer filled with white and then used a fun eraser brush to “reveal” the image under the white layer:

I hope you enjoy my experiments. I sure did.

Stacy, thanks, as always, for a fun challenge. For more from this challenge, visit One Photo Focus: October.

Click the image above for rules on joining the fun!