I love birds, but not the fancy ones like the eagles or the peacocks. I love the little birds that realy don't seem to care who is watching.  they speak peace to me and calm my head.

 These are called red-winged blackbirds. Nothing says common like a name that that describes the animal in terms a four year old can understand.



These two shots were sharpened as far as they can go and then the luminosity is turned up as fat as it can go.

And there is nothing pedantic about these birds either. They just dart around eating the grasshoppers and warbling in a ways that sounds like water droplets.

This one is as shot.

Warmed and sharpened with shadows turned up a little for definition.

This last one feels as hot as hot was that day. 

Each of these pictures were taken within a block of each other in Florence Arizona at about 5:00 in the afternoon. 

This was heavily edited. In fact the clouds were not viable to the naked eye and only showed after I fidgeted with the highs and lows.

Not much was changed here. Just some edge sharpening and a little stressing of the tones the give it structure. I like how the structure tapers of in a way that exaggerates the tilt of the angle. 

Not much here either. This one din't have the edge sharpening but just some burning of the colors. I like the dirt and the concrete blending colors.

Filters: Crayons for adults.

I wants sure if I should add this on at all. I love the feel of it is says a lot about the blend of technology and time. But, that big blue-grey plastic cover ruins the schema. It would work great if it was grey and I though about using Photoshop to take the blue out of it but it make me feel like I cheated. 

These images are the eyes of some of the people I love. 

This one is my princes's.

This one belongs to a brother.

These are his lovely wife's.












Aren't those spots neat?













This ones is mine.
(My bother took the shot)










All of the images have been re-rendered with a color boost and sharped a fair bit. White balance was was yellow shifted because the flash was a quite a bit on the cool side. Color was then washed out a little on the eyelids to make the iris pop just a bit more. The crop is as taken, I used my 55-300mm lens with a poor man's macro tube.

And just one more of my wife because I like her's the best.
You can see the reflection of the iris against her lens.

My models did not anticipate having their pictures taken; I am probably in trouble when they see this.

As you can see, my F-stop was way too low. I thought it would look dramatic but it just looks bad. Because both eyes are not in focus, one looks bigger than the other. This is 1.8, 2.5 would have probably still blurred the shoulders but left the eyes as pretty as they were on the in real life.

The setup was a single boxed quartz light (because I wanted the low f-stop but a high shutter speed) and a reflector about twice as far as the light.










Both were shot in color, cropped, blemishes removed and softness added.  The models are seated  on a studio quality LEGO table because I was too lazy to get the stool.

This photos was with just the quartz light but with the soft-box instead. Which, is why you can see the background (the wall).

And of course, I love Cinemascope.

Verdin in winter at riparian preserve

Cropped, darks turned up slightly.

San Tan Mountains from the Prison

The image was taken in Black and white and a tint was added. A blur was added to the lower portion.

The Facet in my bathroom.
The colors were burned and a slight bloom was added and the edges darkened. A hair was removed and the image is slightly cropped.